Talking to an audience of analysts and journos at the earnings call for the Penske Automotive Group in the USA, this week, the company’s Chairman of the Board and CEO, Roger Penske talked about the company’s move into Australia after the purchase of the of Transpacific’s Commercial Vehicle Group, which imports and sells the Western Star, MAN and Dennis Eagle brands in Australia. The organisation is now known as Penske Commercial Vehicles.
“Turning to Penske Commercial Vehicles, the fourth quarter reflected our first full quarter of operations for the commercial vehicle business and we continue to be very pleased with the initial results,” said Penske. “For the fourth quarter, the commercial vehicle business generated approximately $100 million in revenue. The heavy duty truck markets sold 11,000 units in Australia last year and our brands represented 11.7 percent market share.
“We also have a 10.3 percent market share in the Australian bus market. We believe this business is a tremendous opportunity for the company to grow revenue profitability, while further diversifying the overall footprint of our business.
“I think we remain opportunistic in the U.S. we also look at brands and where we have scale, as we’ve been in Australia, we were there last week, there was lots interest coming to us on the automotive side, I think we run the play with commercial vehicles here for a while before we jump into retail auto but there is a lot of opportunity there.”